


the profound art of the clown

by oncewewerezombies



Series: Tumblr Fills [9]
Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Alien Rituals, Alternia is Terrible, Beforus (Homestuck), Beforus culling references, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Canon Compliant, Chucklevoodoos, Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs, Drabble Collection, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Hobbies, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, MSPA Reader - Freeform, Melancholy, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pale-Caliginous Vacillation, Prophetic Dreams, References to Addiction, References to Canon, Rituals, Sacrifice, Schoolfeeding, Subjuggulator Gamzee Makara, Subjuggulators, Time - Freeform, Unhealthy Relationships, canon moment exploration, clownfest 2020, fake ass bitch, fashionswap, meenahquest, narrative metatext, pale care, prompt week fills, the narrative is a motherfucker, try try try again, unicycles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23593342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: Clownfest 2020Day 1 (April 12): Favorite scene or line - Gamzee & Kurloz MakaraDay 2 (April 13): Clothes swap / fashion day - Grand HighbloodDay 3 (April 14): Time - Gamzee MakaraDay 4 (April 15): Relationships - Chahut MaenadDay 5 (April 16): Hobbies and abilities - Gamzee MakaraDay 6 (April 17): Clown day - Grand HighbloodDay 7 (April 18): Dreams - Kurloz MakaraDay 8 (April 19): Chucklevoodoos and other psychic powers - Gamzee MakaraDay 9 (April 20): MSPAR’s influence - Marvus XolotoDay 10 (April 21): Free day - Karako PierotCheck it out ontumblr.
Relationships: Amisia Erdehn/Chahut Maenad, Meulin Leijon/Kurloz Makara, Mituna Captor & Kurloz Makara, The Condesce/Grand Highblood (Homestuck)
Series: Tumblr Fills [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/590335
Comments: 40
Kudos: 45





	1. the clown waits for the river to run itself dry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KURLOZ: I COME BEARING THEE FINAL JOLLY ACCOUTREMENT MY FAITHFUL INVERTEBROTHER  
> KURLOZ: THY BARDLY REGALIA IS DONE AND FUCKING DUSTED BY THE SPECIAL STARS THEMSELVES  
> KURLOZ: ON THIS DAY THE DARK CARNIVAL REJOICED AND SAID IT WAS MONEY  
> NOW BRING TO LIFE OUR WICKED RUSE WITH APLOMB MY NINJA  
> KURLOZ: OUR LORD AWAITS YOUR SERVITUDE AND TUTELAGE AT ONCE  
> WE SHALL NOW BUST OPEN THESE BITCHIN ELIXIR FORTIES  
> KURLOZ: AND POUR SOME SWEET SWILL OUT FOR THE SOULS WHO SOON WONT BE NO MORE  
>  #:o)  
> GAMZEE: shut your mother fucking mouth and give me the cod piece  
> KURLOZ: (mimes zipperlips)

Standing alone in the dark of this tunnel in the dreambubbles, you hate everything that you are and everything that has brought you here. Every step has had the solidity of finality, of narrative snapping into place to make sure you did exactly what you were motherfucking meant to. You're a god damn deus ex machina and that brings its own motherfucking heartaches and unsteady stepping with it, but you'd rolled along like you had to with the blows of fate. Ain't like you had any other kind of choice. There is only one of you, in the end.

In the end, it's you.

There ain't no one else. No one else who understands, who sees the totality of the story the way you do. There's this jankass motherfucker who thinks as he does, thinks as he's special motherfucking ninja, real cash money. Fact of the matter is, he ain't nothing but a fucking scrub. Xoloto all the way down to his bones, playing at being faithful like it came natural to him. You've tasted him, and you'll spit him from your mouth for he ain't nothing but LUKE FUCKING WARM. Not COLD, not HOT, JUST IN FUCKING BETWEEN.

Here he comes, signing at you like what he has to say means shit to you. Like it means anything, like any of this is anything except what the fuck it is. Totality. Oblivion. It's just the way shit has to go. He don't understand, he don't fucking SEE, he can't ACKNOWLEDGE what you are in truth and what you've been hatched from flame to do. You were born on the back of a meteor, you're an animal bound slavering to the wheel of fortune and making it go down its proper path, you're nothing more than exactly what you need to be. You got blood on your fronds (do you? Has that happened yet? Shit don't seem really real no more). Sometimes shit gets mixed up, but you just go along with what is in your guts, guiding you from step to step. You might be motherfucking unsteady but the Lord will see you step the straight path all the way to bringing Armageddon on every plane of existence.

The way it oughtta be. The way it gotta be. There ain't no choice in what you do. Ain't no choice in what any of those weak motherfuckers you once called friends do. The throbbing feeling of the story snapping into place around you, binding you to the steps you need to take, the actions you need to perform, exactly how the fuck everything goes down so that the Game can be _won_ and _finished with_ makes the bases of your horns itch and you turn a disagreeable snarl on the weak former self of your ancestor.

Nothing. Worse than nothing. Ghosts in the motherfucking machine, cosied down amongst gears and circuits of the universe like they belonged there. Acting like they were more than just NPCs, guidepost characters to lead the true players along the path to victory. Ain't mean nothing, just here to vomit out words of understanding to the real players. The ones who are gonna win the game.

It ain't you. It ain't never been with you.

With that knowledge seething in your gut, you face down the pathetic shadow of your ancestor and shove out your grasperfrond demandingly.

"Shut your mother fucking mouth, and give me the cod piece."

He grins and smiles with his stitched up mouth, and gives the final piece of what you need for this stage of your metamorphosis over to you. After this...you got different things coming. You're gonna be serving the Lord up real close and personal. 

You're gonna leave all this fool ass universe behind and progress on your narrative structure. You can't say you're sore about it, if it means you'll never see this sorry motherfucker ever again.

You take the cod piece.


	2. quadrants are a sack full of ninety-nine dangernoodles and one eel (just stick your frond in it)

A motherfucker would not entire call what you are doing napping, but you are definitely at peace in a place most trolls would not dare to even step. Considering you're the Grand motherfucking Highblood and this is the Empress' intimate resting quarters, there's a load of motherfucking good reasons why no other motherfucker besides you would feel comfortable here. Not even comfortable enough to breathe. Her janiterrorists must be the most closed-maw motherfuckers on this side of interplanetary space, you muse to yourself, and listen to her go on humming while she brushes out her long hair. You'd taken notice of her doing that a little bit ago when you'd bothered to give her a gaze, and you wager she's still going strong at it - there being such an awful lot of hair to brush. It'd gotten in such a rumpus of a tangle too, honk.

The room is a wreckage in the motherfucking good way, and you're sore marked up in ways you can only enjoy when it comes to breaking a skinship fast with your swaggering bitch of an obsidian diamond. You swing black, you'll swing pale - ain't no other way to hate a bitch more fondly and with more regard than the way you hate her. Been a real long time together; a _real long_ motherfucking time. You trust her more than you trust anyone else alive (you don't think of other trolls you have trusted, who have betrayed you) (Arrows) (A noose).

You hear her shifting about and the platform dips next to you.

"What're you doing, my candycotton bitch?" you rumble out, your graspers clasped over your thorax and you all stretched out as though to slumber. Your peepers are still closed. 

"Just stay still, clownfish, hoki," she says with a purr, but without the particular bite to it that would make you open your nuggets to look her in the nug. Instead, you just quirk an eyebrow meaningfully, but stay yourself put. Maybe after the bout of pitch she'd swung around to feeling pale, it's all the explanation you got for how she starts to brush at your mane of hair. It feels nice, she ain't pulling or grabbing, no shit like that, so you let her go on. 

Cool hands run a thick-toothed comb through your locks, pulling it away from your face and making it settle into something more dignified than the wild flare that you usually got going on. You sigh, and let her keep working, especially since every so often she rubs her fingers around the base of your horns. Right where the weight of the stately motherfuckers you carry around seems to hit hardest through to your pan in a tense and unforgiving feeling. Something cool is slid down one horn, then the other and you snort.

"Prettifying me up, are you?"

"Shoosh, beach!" A brisk smack against your cheek and you subside to let her get the fuck on with it, if it pleases her. You got nowhere else to be right now, which is a wonder and a miracle all of itself. Between the two of you, the most you can usually do is beamed vidchats. Time together in the flesh is not to be scorned nor wasted. As the prophets say, there ain't no bitch like your own bitch, no matter how foul or unhandsome they may seem to others. Lucky you, since your pale spade is the standard of trollish motherfucking beauty. And it ain't all because she pays the fashion mags to say so, neither. 

She works a bit longer and you make a grumbly noise as she starts painting stuff on your face, just light little touches. Obviously no holy paint this, whatever she's using, but you had washed yourself bare in the ablutioncloset after you'd both mightily pailed in several places all over her chambers, but nowhere close to her actual platform. The noise just gets you another shoosh and a quick pap, but you ain't feeling too threatened or too concerned so you just let her keep keeping on with whatever she's doing. It's keeping her entertained for one, and besides...it does feel at least a little fucking good. She keeps combing through your hair and you're sure you can feel her fix little things in it and such, but what she's doing still feel real motherfucking _goooood_... So you let her keep going.

It's not like it's a hard choice, if you're gonna be motherfucking real with all y'all motherfuckers.

"Alrayght, you can look," she says finally, and you open your eyes. She's holding up a mirror and biting her lip like she's unsure of herself, and that's a big enough surprise all of its fucking lonesome. You sit up and take the personal reflective-surface off her by its handle, to survey what the fuck she's done to you.

"I look like a motherfucking wader," is what you got to say as you look at yourself. She's done you up all court, gold jewellery with her colours and seajewels for decoration all up your horns and braided through your hair. Makeup to make your eyes look bigger and wider like a seadweller beauty, softly purple darkening the lines of your mouth to make it look sensuous. A little glitter to really bring out your cheekbones, and highlight your fake-ass gillslits, the ragged fin-edge of your ears. You look sleek, and dangerous in a whole new way - but you're still gonna complain about it. Bitch making you up to look like one of her lackeys, what the fuck. Rude. "You wishin' for a finfuck, I could go grab one right now and bring 'em in."

"You so nasty when I'm being nice to you!" she fumes and grabs at your cheek and ear with pinching nails, making you squall and then the whole thing dissolves into a tussle on her platform. You take a chance to wipe your face against one of her comfortnubs, leaving a smear of glitter and purple along its surface. She shrieks when she realises what you're doing. "Wait! Wait! I didn't take no shellfie wave you yet! KURLOZ! BEACH, STAY STILL ALRAYDY!"

When she gets to take her motherfucking photo, you're a mess. But so's she.

Which is just the way you like it.


	3. as the sun rises higher, we sit beside the salty water

"The thing with time, is that you really need to stop thinking about it as a singular, constant and immutable force," Aradia explains to you kindly as you sit together side by side on a rusted structure, your mutual walkingstubs dangling over a salty-ass sea in a world neither of you came from. There's a lot of spaces where things can be put together, where you can meet with a motherfucker on the down low outside of the blinding gaze of the demands of the narrative. There's a whole book you got for making sure of this shit, and there's a reason why the sky in this bubble is tinted indigo blue.

She's holding her Music Box Time Machine in her hands, looking out over the waves. You always liked her; you like most people, mostly everybody. But she wasn't mean to a motherfucker when you'd spoken when you'd had a chance to (never much or often), and she meant something to Tavros. So. Most of your feelings about her are mild to good, but this version of Aradia is much more spritely and motherfucking alive than the one you're pretty sure you've done most of your talking to.

"It is and it isn't. It's a constant _and_ it's a waveform. The Music Box will help you collapse the needed waveforms in the right places so you can do what you need to do," she continues on, and dimples a wide toothy grin at you. You grin back with all your whickitywhack needlely teeth, because that's what a motherfucker does, right? When someone smiles at you, you offer a smile back. And she laughs, like she appreciates your efforts. 

The two of you are both wearing your motherfucking god robes, her in the red of Time and you in your purple. All purple, all the time, and all motherfucking _Rage_. You'd never understood it until you'd lived longer, seen more. You've done things you haven't enjoyed, but you know what needs to be done and you'll do it. For Him. For Them. There's a world after this that you need to go to, and Aradia's giving you a real demonstration on how the fuck to do it. She knows what it means too, what you're going to do and where you're going but she seems like she just doesn't give a shit but she'll help you anyway, because somewhere down the red red miles, something is gonna motherfucking _burn_. And she is all for that, for sure.

"A motherfucker thinks he be picking up what you're putting down, Arasis," you say doubtful, but you're sure that when it's time for you to unleash the power of the Music Box, it'll be just fine. Miracles, that's all anything ever was. She could get as technical as she motherfucking wanted, but shit worked because of miracles in the core of a thing. And there were miracles fair shining out of the little thing she was holding in her hands. 

"I wouldn't worry too much, Gamzee! If you _do_ do something wrong, you'll never know it!" Aradia laughs a lot brighter at the mention of your possible death, and you chuckle yourself. Her bitchtitty wings flutter a little, and pixiedust drifts in scarlet trails down to the blue-green ocean hungry and waiting, hivelengths below your feet. The surf sighs, and a little flicker of wind plays with the curls in both your hair. "It's pretty hard to put down a clown, though! I think you'll be just fine."

She pats you on the back, and then passes you the Music Box before leaning back with her hands on the girder as she kicks her walkfronds, humming merrily. Holding the Music Box Time Machine in your grip, feeling the edges of it cut into your palms, you sigh a little and shrug. Now you've got it and you've had the downlow on how to use it, it's probably time to get moving.

"Stay a while," she says abruptly, like she can hear what you're thinking. And how tired you feel while you're thinking it. Maybe she does know; she's done a lot to move the storyline along in all the ways it needed to be moved. Sometimes by brute force. If anyone could understand how you're feeling, it's Aradia Megido, Maid of Time. "You've got all the time you need, and this is a nice bubble."

"I guess if you're not itching to get moving, I ain't neither," you say, and settle back into your sitting position. Just kinda cradling the Music Box Time Machine and looking at the crystals of it sparkle in the weak sunlight. It'd been a motherfucking pusherstopper coming into a starmonkey bubble the first time, but you're more used to it now. You kick your legs a little bit like her, and let out a long breath. You've got a hellacious load of work coming. Maybe this restful moment is a good idea. "...thanks, sis."

"De nada."

She grins at you again, and then you both go back to watching the patterns on the waves. Until it's the right moment to go apparently, and she vanishes. After a little bit more thought - you do too. No rest for the righteous, not when you're putting down rails for the timeline to choochoo down. The memory of this bubble is a calm moment in your memory that you hold to yourself for a long time.

A very long. Long. Time.

(HONK)  
(honk)  
(HONK)


	4. i'm bleeding to death (everything's fine)

Quadranting can be a serious motherfucking business for trolls. You get it wrong, you can be totally _fucked_. Imperial Drones do not give one single pinch of squeakbeast shit as to might haves and could haves, and would haves. They only care about what fucking _is_.

Sometimes you know you can have it right and still not dare reach out your grasper to take it, for so many fucking reasons. If you could, you would, but if you did you'd be motherfucking _scum_ , so you hold yourself back. Even when it's there for the taking. Even though you _know_ she'd be pleased as fuck if you'd just - if you would - if you could -

You're strong as fuck and pure in the eyes of the Church. You attend your honkelujah mass as much as you can and more than you have to, you know the words, the rituals, you've got 'em all down as down can be. You've spilled the blood that's sought for and painted the walls in holy sacrament and praise for the Messiahs. You have done everything as right as you can, and still the only thing that truly deeply makes you happy in all the secret spaces of your pusher is coming here - to this small apartment in this blueblooded swill hivestem cluster - to listen to her as she talks about her art and how she went looking for new canvas the other night, and she found this shitblood with _just the right shade_ for her work - and your whole pusher bleeds apart in glittering shards of pity on the inside of your chest under the impact of her voice.

What you want to do is take care of her, sort her shit out, make her happy and stable and get her to feeling safe. If you were a faithless fool with no more sense in your pan than a chirpcritter, you'd do it. A clown you may be, but you ain't no fucking fool, no way mama. You're too close to Ascension to make an offer of moirallegiance anything but a farce. It ain't fair. It wouldn't be righteous. A quick fuck and pail would be one thing, but you're sorted on those fronts already. Got some believers as to who wouldn't be proper hateful or pitiful but close enough for no never mind, close enough to get you all through the trials of donation but...nothing more than that. You're adrift, and the aching feeling of pushing off from her waiting anchor is an ache all through your soul.

"...Chahut? Chahut!" Amisia be frowning at you and you stir yourself from where you'd been sitting on her petite couch with your knees somewhere up around your auralclots. Ain't nothing in this place built for someone your size, which is fair enough. You won't be here for long enough that it would be worth a little sister's while to make it proper comfortable for you. In the back of your thinkpan, a clock ticking tolls its time as it counts down sooner and sooner and nearer to the time when you'll be leaving this planet behind. 

Leaving Amisia behind.

"All my motherfucking apologies, little sister," you rumble out as you stir to disturb your aches, and scratch the side of your face delicately with the tips of your claws. Been staring off into space, watching her to a point where it's caught her notice. Damn, bitch, stop wearing your pity on your motherfucking grasperfrond cover like that. But you can't help yourself, you guess. Still doesn't mean you're ever gonna say anything.

You know she knows, and she knows you know how she feels but neither of you are gonna make a move. Wouldn't be fair. Wouldn't be right. Doing right is sacrifice, you remind yourself and you make yourself smile slow, as you look at her and her newest work of art.

"I'll get my listen on real and proper now, true," you promise, and betoken yourself to take a true and proper attitude of attention and reverence. Besides. Why waste the time you got with thinking about what's coming? Ain't like you don't know what's coming, for real and proper. Messiahs coming, that's sure and motherfucking _certain_. But before that, Ascension be coming to take you the fuck away from this cosy little apartment and its cute as fuck owner, with all her winsome and murdersome ways. "Tell me again, how you found the right shade of green for your painting, Amisia, little paintsis."

"You better actually listen this time, you big clown," she scolds you with her mouth all pursed up, huffing indignancy and waving her paintbrush for emphasis. It's a nice painting, better'n some of her others though you always tell her that her pieces are the best thing you've seen, swear on the holy colours. They always are. Because they're hers. "Ok, so I was walking down to get a smoothie, from that shop, you know..."

Elbow on knee and chin propped on frond, you listen to her intently and try to store away as much of her just as she is in the nooks and crannies of your thinkpan. It's gonna be a long long time before you meet her again - if you meet her again. That's just the way things are, in the cruel world of troll pity. 

You'll ask the Messiahs for a miracle next time you're at church. They're different to trolls, and who knows? You might even get what you motherfucking ask for.


	5. i must confess (i still believe)

Tonight's the night, you tell yourself as you approach the bane of your existence. Tonight, surely, Messiahs will smile on you at least. You will succeed where you have failed so many times before. This time, you'll do it. You'll do what any clown and follower of the Messiahs should surely be able to do. It isn't meant to be a difficult sacrament, you don't think so anyway. 

Nobody else seems to have the same motherfucking troubles as you do. You've pored over videos on Crueltube with other novice subjuggulators and they all be getting up and making the one wheel device do as they motherfucking will it to do. They always look like they're having fun too. You've watched so many videos of people on their one wheel devices on Crueltube, your sightbulbs are just about crossed over far 'nuff to see around the back of your thinkpan.

You're gonna do it, tonight. Tonight, for sure. You're sure, you're motherfucking certain. Tonight!

Tentatively, you pull the comfortnubstub of the one wheel device towards you, up between your thighs so's as you can get ready to get your seat on it. The way you're biting down on the corner of your facegash is an ache, lingering as you tell yourself not to fuck it up this time. No, you're not gonna! You're gonna do it this time, you remind yourself, and get ready to put your stub on one pedal and the other on the ground, ready to push up and get on proper. One.

One.

One.

One, twothree! With one hand on the wall, you struggle up and for a moment, just a moment, you got your balance, you're seated firm and you can feel the tips of your walkingfrond nubs on the pedals. You skip the tips of your walkfrondcovers against the pedals, one hand still on the wall. You feel daring enough to even roll forward, away from the wall and everything seems to be working for a real hot fucking bitchtitty second. You're riding it! You are doing it, dog!

And then like always, everything comes apart around you like if a brother blew over a house made of gambleslips. All fluttering everywhich motherfucking way, stiffened cellulose sheets flipping in the wind. You can feel it coming as you lean forward too far for a moment, then back too hard to correct yourself. You lose not just one pedal, but both and then that's it, all over. You kinda go one way, and the one wheel device goes the other.

Stunned and with the breathing knocked right outta your airsacks, you just lay there for a moment against the wall. Motherfuck, your whole pan be ringing like holy gong that's been hit with a mallet. After that moment of dizzying breathlessness, you get up and feel yourself over a bit. Sure, things hurt a bit here and there but ain't nothing broken. Running your wiggledigits through your hair hadn't made you notice any new tenderness and your hands when you pulled them round to check weren't slick purple anywhere, so you guess Messiahs protected you once again.

Pursing your lips a little, you use the wall next to you to help yourself get up and then wobble your way to the kitchen. After a pie slice or so, maybe you'll have another go at it. When you been snacking on pies, you don't notice the bumps so much. And you sure gained yourself a few right now.

Pie, then maybe you'll watch a movie or something. And then you'll try again.

Just because it didn't work this time, doesn't mean it won't work _ever_. You can get this, you tell yourself. All the way through you're clown, you just ain't got the hang of this yet. 

Tomorrow night, for sure.


	6. is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid? (your cardiopusher, do the Messiahs control?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Sacrificial death

Gripping the edges of the pulpit, you gaze out fond over the crowd in the chapel. A sea of painted faces swim up at you from the smoke, sweet burnt sugar smell in the air from burning pixiedust in the censers. If you breathe too deep, you'll burn the tubes out from your sniffnode. But you're well used to this, it's been motherfucking centuries that you've been preaching. You think there is hardly a clown in the Fleet who bothers to think on the Grand Highblood who preceded you, what other shapes the Church has taken in the distance of time. There's just you, the big man (big everywhere, sluts and bitches, honk honk). Just you and what you've pulled and pressed into being, like working with clay until you had the right vessel to serve the Messiahs with, born from the body of your church, of your fellow subjuggulators, of all your motherfucking holy colour.

It's all as the Messiahs decree. They were then, and you're the now. Motherfucker with his hand on the pulse of fate, listening to the whispers from the Outer Realms, from angels, to ensure that Messiahs' plans are followed down to the fucking letter. There's a way they want this universe to go and you're the ninja who'll see as it goes down the crooks in the path that they decree. Putting up with the blasphemous bitch who calls herself the Empress is a small fucking sacrifice to lay down before Their feet, it ain't nothing. You'd be lying to say you weren't a little fond of a fishy bitch, but on a sacred signal, you'd cut her feet out from under her. No hard feelings, it was just that you'd been owned blood and bone long before you'd knelt down to offer her your loyalty and that of all your clowns.

You're pretty sure she knows anyway and don't care too much, and that's a holy motherfucking joke if you've ever seen one.

"Sisters!" You throw out a frond to one side and all the juggalettes in the audience howl for you. "Brothers! My RIGHTEOUS fam!" You throw out your other hand, tipping your chin up with your palms to the roof and basking in the screams that steady into rhythmic whoops that pulse through the blood. Your whole caste knows how to motherfucking _party_ , and today is indeed a day of festivities and holy motherfucking fervour. "Are you _ready_...TO GET THE FUCK DOWN WITH YOUR BITCHTITTY SELVES?"

The roar that answers you says that they are, they are infuckingdeed.

It's like flame in your blood. They feed you and you dole it straight back, stoking each other higher on this holy night. Ain't hardly a better way to worship the Messiahs, you don't think.

"That's what I wanna hear! That's what Messiahs ask you for," you encourage, and stride out from the pulpit to get closer down to the front rows. Briefly kneeling on the stage, you reach out to your clownren, your siblings in faith of every kind and shape but just the one colour. Purple flashes at you from every corner of the room, purple eye and purple signs and vestment, and holy red and green where it's safe to show the wicked righteous colours. To show something of the deeper faith, in a place where no motherfucking unbeliever, no shitblood, no saltscum would ever be motherfucking _welcome_.

This is all of yours. It's just for you righteous motherfuckers, the ones who be boogying down with the holy beat that pulses through the universe like a cardiopusher rhythm. It beats, and beats, and beats and brings you all closer to Honkageddon. Brings you closer to that time where every motherfucking thing will end in flames and ruin, the best punchline that any fuck could deliver. 

"Messiahs stood between sand and sea and turned Their gaze to the waves and did they see anything worth saving?" you roar down at your sweetly beloved motherfuckers and they _scream _**NO!** back to you. Striding the stage, you shake your head and feel the beads woven into your hair click against each other soundlessly. Something so subtle has no chance of being heard over this crowd of clowns, thirsting for SCHOOLFEEDING to be handed down from your blessed maw. "No, they did NOT! They turned their sightnubs on the other side of Themselves to the motherfucking dirt and all They saw was _filth!_ "__

__The clowns listening to you are wailing with joyful terror, grasperfronds grabbing for you and holy fervour on every face as you can see._ _

__"They put Their fronds down into the sand and pulled it up! And in HOLY MOTHERFUCKING FIRE...it turned to something sharp and strong!" you sing out, making sure to keep the Scripture flowing from your croakvalve. "They picked up grains of sand in a fist and made the MANY into ONE BLADE!"_ _

__The whoops are cataclysmic, exploding through your bones and body as you preach and flaunt yourself to the body of your believers. The air swings heavy with sweat and sugar, stinking. Y'all reek in here, this closed space inship. Even when there's no one in it, it still smells like what it's used for. Smells like worship. Like praise._ _

__You _love_ it._ _

__"And what is a SHARP EDGE for, my best beloved motherfuckers? My most holy breathed ninjas?" Every breath you take is deep dragged into your airsacks, rasping razorblades, your whole thinkpan is on _fire_. Every mote of your blood is lit with holy fervour, and you have no doubt that your ganderbulbs are whirling orange to red. You can see it reflected in every face around you._ _

__"DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!"_ _

__You whirl in a circle, hands ostentatiously on display as they scream out truth, the inevitability of death surrounding you all, the end of the universe progressing steadily on its way as the Messiahs decree that it shall be. As you face the back where none can see you, you dip your chin down and grab a certain bead of your necklace between your teeth, crush it and then spit it out. Smoke billows out in sudden deceptive gusts as it hits the floor, making the back of the stage disappear and the whoop whoop whoop of your clowns, your holy believers, only gets stronger. More concentrated. It's on a beat, grasperfronds clapping in time and stomping carrying out the underbeat. It's something alive, all of its own._ _

__Reaching into the smoke, you pull out a troll. Just a motherfucking shitblood, nothing to concern yourself with. You don't even know what they did to get themselves into disfavour with your inquisitormentors but you'd asked for a traitor, and so you had been provided with one. The shitblood blinks rusty eyes at you, obviously at least partially drugged, to not be immediately freaking out on being on stage and in front of a crowd of purplebloods baying for blood. Any blood._ _

__"For the Lord of Double Death!" you cry out, holding the shitblood by the wrist and pulling their arm towards the ceiling with your own._ _

__"For the Lord!" the beat comes back to you, and red eyes shine at you from the crowd between wreaths of sugarsmoke. A gentle hiss as the misters turn on, and blessed Faygo is sprinkled on you all, sweet and translucent. The crowd is a seething mass of faces and clapping hands, tossing horns. Your bulge is pressing out against your codpiece, you're on motherfucking FIRE in this service tonight. You are BLESSED and you are POSSESSED._ _

__"For the Lady of Infinite Mercy!" you shout, and the crowd in front of you just screams. They're too far gone for words at this point. "Destroy this motherfucker," you say, almost gently and then violently pull your arm back, and then forward, throwing the shitblood to the crowd._ _

__There's not even time for a motherfucker to scream before there's gouts of rustyshitblood spouting up between clawed hands. They tear the unlucky fucker to pieces. What happens to the parts, you don't know but you'd wager on them being eaten or shoved into a pocket for a relic. Ain't nobody ever finding anything after when they have to clean, you know that from experience. You throw your hands up to the sky, swaying to the beat you can feel in your bones._ _

__"Whoop whoop!"_ _

__"Whoop whoop!" your congregants chorus back, and you feel the power radiating through your whole body. You were hatched for this. You were destined for exactly the fuck kind of power you have._ _

__It's a good time to be a clown, and you intend to see it stays that way._ _


	7. rip me up and spread me all around (i'm nothing but immortal battle fodder)

All your life, you been having dreams. All kinds of dreams. Some dreams, you know that they been true.

They been _the real motherfucking shit _, no fooling. They been exactly what is to come, and you motherfucking know it. There's all kinds of hardship and traitorous behaviour in your future, but you're not sure you expected anything else. You always been told it'll be your responsibility to catch other motherfuckers up, to see that people are looked the fuck after. It just ain't going to be how your tutors and mentors think it is going to be, because the world, the _universe_ , you were hatched to has a motherfucking expiry date and it is racing towards its end.__

__Your name is Kurloz Makara and you been dreaming of the world dying._ _

__Scriptures say lots of softly softly shit, your mentors at church purse their lips and raise their eyes to the heavens, like the Carousel is already there and waiting to take them pious motherfuckers away at your probing questions. You feel like there's more than what's written. More than what you got access to, at least. You been dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, and your sleep at days brings you no rest in recent days._ _

__Playing games for wigglers on the Preystation with Mituna or burying your face in the gracious expanses of your kittybitch's chest do bring you some respite, you can't say they don't. You pity them fiercely for what they are, what they mean to you. But your dreams are bringing you more than just those simple pleasures, thoughts on what they can _do_ for you. That doesn't bother you as much as maybe it should. You're higher than them, after all. Part of your status as a CIP, means you'll look after where they can't look after themselves and they'll give you what they have to give, even if they don't understand what or why. Besides, you know just how to smooth over any recriminations or arguments - it's for their own fucking good, it really is._ _

__It's better for everyone if they're happy, and if they do what you tell 'em to fucking do._ _

__This day's dreaming seems to have been directly impacted by the news that the Heiress has snatched her weaksauce self off to the moon in a tantrum. You wake with a hard inhale, visions of destruction and coloured balls with numbers and patches of white dancing in your thinkpan. Meulin makes a sleepy disgruntled noise where she's cuddled up against your side on the slumberplatform, and you rub your fondlesticks gently around her horns until she settles back into sleep. You don't want to talk yet, you want a chance to think. Meulin means well, and she's your sweet kittybitch with the hellriotious titties, but she's real fucking loud and sometimes you just want her to _shut up_. Keeping her asleep so you can think to yourself without meowbeast puns dinning on your auralclots is just caring for both of you, it is._ _

__Messiahs all hail, and bless the Lord. You think shit is about to get real._ _

__When you get a troll from Meenah, about getting together to play a game - you ain't the slightest surprised._ _

__Sometimes dreams really do come true._ _


	8. i can't take direction and my socks are never clean

Your name is Gamzee Makara and you are fucking bored as fuck.

Schoolfeeding ain't never been one of your highest priorities, you got to say.

"...consider, clownlings, it's one thing to smash a shitblood's inner pan to pieces and pick out what you can from the shattered remains, but it's another fucking thing entirely to finesse it apart and take what you need - and leave it so you can return again, and amotherfuckin'gain at need," the schoolfeeder lectures from her place on the platform, one grasper hitting the lectern to make her motherfucking emphasis. Schoolfeeder Enigmi is a harsh ass lecturer. If she thinks you're not paying attention, you'll catch it for sure. Not to say she's gonna like do some sort of inquisitormenting on your self, but a slap around the nug is about the least that you can expect. That, and some cutting words delivered at making sure that none of your feedmates even wanna _think_ on shadedreaming in her class again. "Brother _Makara!_ "

"Yeah, sis - uh, ma'am?" you yelp, jerking yourself to a more at attention pose. Back straight, fronds on the table in front of you and digits tightened near to breaking around your writestick. Little sniggers come from around you in different places and you feel your ears try to flick, gnawing at the inside of your mouth. Fuck! Enigmi is looking at you like she can't believe anyone let you onto the damn ship in the first fucking place, and you thank the Messiahs that you can't feel the dull tingling of a betraying flush across your cheeks as you look at her back. 

"Hope you've been listening, my engaging little student," Enigmi croons, and her broad fingers tap gently against the wood of her lectern. She's looking at you like she'd made up her mind about something, and you cringe back into your seat a beat. She ain't the most physically terrifying of the schoolfeeders you've had since you landed up here, but she's frightening in other fucking ways. Her sightbulbs look at a motherfucker like she knows exactly how to turn him inside out, cold contrast to her plump figure. Underneath the chub, you're pretty sure she's got the muscles to throw a scuttlebuggy. "Come on up! We're gonna do some motherfucking _demonstrating_."

"Yeah, ok, whatever you say, schoolfeeder Enigmi," you mutter because the last thing you wanna do is make her madder by not showing the proper respect when you just fucked up. Shuffling around, just one more half-grown subjuggulator all length and bone and naivety among a crowd of others just the same, you slouch your fleshhusk around to stand next to her, one frond grabbing onto the wrist of the other grasper and standing near her. Boy, for someone who incorporated flushhearts into her paint, she sure weren't open with any kinda fucking pity as far as you can see. 

"Since we just motherfucking got started...I wanna see you call up some hoodoos," she instructs, voice false-kindly towards you. Thankfully, she don't make a move to touch you. Y'ain't a huge fan of being touched, unless you invite it. You're too used to not being touched, even when all your hide seems to cry out in hunger for some motherfucker to come along and stroke it soft (man, you motherfucking miss Karkat something real fierce, you hope that it won't be too long before your two ships are in orbit again). The schoolfeeder's voice snaps you out of your pale musings and back to your current predicament, pinned to display in front of the smirking gaze of your peers like a flutterbug to a board. "Snap to it, little brother."

"Uh hum, sure thing, sister schoolfeeder," you say, because what the fuck else can you say? The little sneer she delivers it with makes it seem like she thinks you've done nothing with your chucklevoodoos, not ever. Like you're just trash. Maybe you hadn't Ascended in the best of motherfucking situations, but you been working real hard to catch up and get your shit sorted. Maybe it hadn't meant as much as you'd thought it mighta - fuck. What a cluster of festering shit. Sure gonna have a lot to talk about once you get a chance to talk to your shouty motherfucker again. You rub your grasper over your frondhinge, sigh and access your chucklevoodoos. Schoolfeeder Enigmi hadn't asked you to do else besides bring 'em up, so that's the whole of what you do. Not aiming at no motherfucker, just letting everything seep out to fill the room. You can feel your co-clownlings in the haze of it, bright sparks floating and a fire that's the schoolfeeder right next to you. The 'voodoos are a choking haze, and you let them thicken further.

"Not bad," she says as you let yourself feel the fear. Despite herself, you think, she sounds approving. One of the things you'd had to do to keep yourself hale was to ward off motherfuckers as who might have had ill intent, and maybe you can fight, if you gotta. But you'd rather just scare them off. Her voice irritates you, and a flash of rage ripples through your haze of psychic energies. The first row or so look sick, just for a moment and the flames - flicker. "Just hold it for me, brother Makara."

She goes on to talk more, and you swear you're trying to listen, you are. But you've never really had to hold things back from really fucking people up before, and you can feel it slipping out of your fingers. It's like when you were trying to learn how to one-wheel, on a one-wheel device that was too long for your motherfucking walkingfronds. Each moment, you haul it back - and then it slips again and each time the slips get worse.

"Sister, I'unno -" You try to say something so she calls it quits and she waves you off, keeps on talking and speechifying about how to use the mirthful shit in your thinkpan for inquisitormenting and punishment of lowbloods and so on, and you can feel the whole ship underneath you wallow like a beached whale. Long slow shudder that don't exist anywhere except in your own motherfucking head. Despite her not saying to, you start to try and haul it all back onto the inside of your thinkpan, shut yourself down. It works, until it doesn't.

You always done better with clear instructions and a motherfucking purpose. Being left to your own devices ain't your strong suit.

The moment you lose it, you know it. _Everybody_ knows it. Your 'voodoos explode out into the room and the whole class crumples. Aw, fuck, you ain't mean to do that. Schoolfeeder Enigmi turns back as to shout at you as you're wincing and you're scrambling to get your shit under control as she's opening her maw to say something reprehensible but the door to the room flies open. It shocks you both so that everything gets real motherfucking dark in here. 

"What the ABSOLUTE FUCK, sister," a voice booms and you can feel it reverberate through to your bones, shaking you all the way through like you haven't felt since the first time you'd found a sermon online. Listening to it, you'd felt how real and true it was all the way through every cell, singing to your blood. Messiahs and blood and flame, and all that good shit. "Schoolfeeding been gone to _shit_ -"

The looming figure in the doorway reaches out with one hand at you, and you can see **EYES AND TEETH** that take up the whole room. There's pressure swelling hard, painful, at the hinges of what makes up your thinkpan, your oculars are burning and spinning and something in you recognises -

And everything breaks, like a balloon not even popping just phhhhbting it's way into emptiness. You're left blinking stupid as everyone else starts to complain and stir themselves from the floor. Glancing sideways at Enigmi, you kind of sidle away because she's looking just as dumbfounded as you and you don't want to be in reach of her hand when she discovers that expression on her nug. Just playing it safe, you know? You've finally learned how to do that, helps there ain't sopor clouding shit all up the time no more.

" **Damn, son** ," the voice drawls out, and you shiver on the inside. You can't look up, but a grasper grabs your face and _makes_ you bring your gaze up. Everything's a blur anyway, and all you can make out is paint and tall and eyes that seem to rake you through to your molecular cells and beyond. All the way through to your fucking soul, son. You hold your breath; he clicks his tongue before letting go. "Enigmi, take a walk with me, alright?"

Is she getting in trouble? You're still standing frozen on the stage as your schoolfeeder and this interloper who seems to order her around like it was nothing make their own way out. He pauses for a moment to let Enigmi go ahead of him, and turns back, waving a lazy hand like he's just remembered that he's leaving a roomful of barely grown adolescents in a room by themselves and with so much to fucking talk about.

"Read your books or some shit, we'll be right back, my most MOTHERFUCKING faithful motherfuckers," he says airily, and then they disappear, door closing behind them with a quiet click. No one seems to want to look at you real hard, but the whole motherfucking place explodes with chatter as soon as the door closes.

The Grand Highblood.

That was _the_ Grand Highblood, and he'd looked at _you_. Touched you, even. When you get back to your writingstand, you ain't even notice that you're gnawing on the hump of your bent knuckle-thumb like a wiggler. You're too busy thinking about what his eyes were like and what the firm fleeting pressure of his grasper cupping your nubpoint had felt like.

You don't even have an idea what all this could mean, and you wonder. You're all wonder and concentrating on your studies is motherfucking _beyond_ you. Thankfully, it's beyond all of you and when the schoolfeeder comes back, she dismisses you all with irritation plain on her face. You just keep quiet to think on things. Not knowing what everything means.

The Grand Highblood was so _fucking_ cool.

All you can do is hope you get to see him again. Real soon.


	9. shoplift as often as you can (stores factor shoplifting into their prices so if you don't, it's like they're getting money for free)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xoloto - when a punk ass bitch juffalo be tryin to ride yo faygo.
> 
> Juffalo - A term a juggalo uses to insult another juggalo they consider to be fake.

Sitting in front of your selfreflection device-table, you take a moment to breathe and settle yourself into your skin. Bare face stares back at you, and you take a moment more to look at yourself, tanktop stretched tightly across your shoulders and chest before you pick up your brushes. Dab on primer, slick on grey and white paint where it goes. It's old hat by now, babies and sweet chickadees, you've been slapping this expensive slapshit with its 'blessing from the Grand Highblood in every pot guaranteed!!!!' 'cross your nug for sweeps. Since you started, you've woke up and realised just how much of what it means to be who you are was a motherfugging performance for the sake of appeasing the powers that really ruled the roost. It ain't your caste, and it ain't the Church, no matter how much the big man says otherwise.

It's not that you ever really had a belief, per fucking se, but you ain't about to make a fuss. Not when mouthing the right words and wasting an hour or so of your time every so often in church gives such motherfucking dividends. Music is where your real calling is, and the stage is your spiritual home. You're enough of a businesstroll to know that you need the network that comes for a purpleblood by hooking into the Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs, and so you do. The risk is kinda fun too, you can't deny. If motherfuckers knew how little you believed, you'd get something worse than any shitblood who wandered into the path of a righteous clown.

No one's figured you out for the impostor you are yet. Motherfucker, like you can fucking _help_ it. You been drawn back the curtains on the _behind_ of the stage thanks to that strange little alien motherfucker, and you can't pretend as you haven't. Not to your ownself, at least. You'd known - always known - what fakeass motherfuckers be running this shit, ever since you'd realised how you were being ushered through to winning Slam Or Get Culled. But that little weird white motherfucker had brought you to a new perspective.

Funny as fuck to think of that you probably ain't even canon. Nothing true to you at all. Marvus Xoloto, the coolest of ice-cold slam artists, and you're all fucking fakery all the way through. Just like everyone else, if you're gonna be real for a moment there. Sometimes it's all you can do to, to hold all your laughter in. The only thing you've come into contact with that was bonafide cash money was your weird ass little friend from nowhere around here.

What a weird ass little fucker it is. You remember the first time you seen your friend, with that looming juggalette with the drop-down horns in church, wearing a party dress. You'd tried it on with them, almost out of reflex and then you'd all been motherfucking graced by a visit from the big man upstairs himself, the Grand Highblood. You'd almost brushed it off, not thinking of it again, until you spotted him with that clussy chasing blueblood, Codakk. One of the casualties of your concerts that frankly, you won't fukking be griefed over. All he'd wanted was to kiss ass so hard his sniffnode was turned an unsavoury nasty colour, natch.

Now you know more, and you understand more, of how your colour is used. You been having revelations of how far down your motherfucking fellows are placed, while being lied to as to how they're near top of the heap. How they get all this power, while being nothing more than a legion of inexpensive Imperial drones. Cullers, nothing more. A force of fear that the Empire wielded with no subtlety, and without thought or inkling as to what they all might want. And they ain't even got the sense to see how they're being used.

There has to be a turning point somewhere that you can use; you just ain't had the sense to see it yet.

"Mr Xoloto! Five minutes!" A knock and a sharp voice from outside your dressing room door calls you back to your life (is it real life? Or is just a dream where you're dreaming that you're a purpleblooded troll called Marvus Xoloto? A fantasy?) and your pressing obligations. You wink at yourself, pulling yourself together and up 'n away from your makeup desk, reaching out for your coat.

"Out in muthafuckin' second, babe, just chill your horns," you call back to the troll who's been put into the place of reminding you of your responsibilities. Gotta get out there, gotta get that dough. Gotta work work work work work it. You stretch out your grasping fronds, rolling your nug on your shoulders until something goes crack.

You should look up that little lusus-lookin' motherfucker again real soon. You miss them.

And who knows; maybe they'll pull you into more crazy shit. You could do with more of that in your life.


	10. sing like a bird buried in the ground

Living in the caverns with Bronya is fine and good, you love her like the lusus you should have had but don't, you guess, but you can't help wanting freedom. You know that she worries her ass off bout you, always roaming where you will but you been fine so far. And now that you have a friend outside of the Jadebloods that you know so well, you can't help yourself from roaming further afield to see who else you can meet. If there will be more like the Reader, the chooser of choices, the bender of fates.

You know (you don't know them) he's your friend (you both died and rode the Carousel). 

(sometimes you feel like you're riding it still - angels flowing in the draft beside you)

Reaching out, you grip a leaf of one of the trees next to you. Pull it and rub it between your graspsticks, sniff it and then crouch down to dig your graspers into the dirt. Really feeling it, you know? 

(fuchsia eyes in goggles stare)

(is this you speaking? you don't even know no more)

Noooope. You're motherfucking fine and dandy-ass. A croakcritter lurking in the underbrush catches your ganderbulb and you crouch-hop after it as it tries to get away from you, feeling the knives strapped across your chest bang in their familiar comforting rhythm. A brother's got to defend himself, yo? The Reader might be your friend, but you know that seadwelling trolls sure ain't. With their flicky little fins and narrow little teeth. They always been wanting to stab things just to watch them squirm.

You don't. You got knives and shit yeah, but you ain't like that. You ain't against stabbing a motherfucker if they deserves it though, there's only so much mercy in you despite Bronya's best efforts. Mimicking the croakcritter with your own cheerful honks, you hop-jump-crouch after it, fronds getting muddy and messy as you squelch-squat your way through the bushes. Mud soft, and you give up on crouch-jumping after a while and jump to your stubs, before leaping through the bushes to roll down a hillside.

Nothing tries to eat you, so you're taking it as a motherfucking win. You wind up in the wet trickle of water at the bottom of the gulch and you burble, blowing bubbles in the dirty liquid and spitting it out. If you do it right, you can squirt it right through that tiny gap on the left of your fangs. You experiment until you can aim right and take out a buzzstinger with it when you really try, and that's it, you're bored with your expertise. Clambering out of the gully, you brush your hands against your decency coverings that Bronya makes you wear, and consider what to do next.

(in the depths of the universe things whisper and roil - indecent things of space slither and writhe)

Uh uh, not tonight. Y'ain't about that shit right now, not this moment or any moment. Somehow, you know it's not the time and you push it back beyond you, back to where it belongs.

Something dwelling in the cardiopusher of reality seethes, but you ignore it with grace. 

Despite your efforts, you don't find the Reader, or the twins, or no nobody as you'd be willing to talk to. You gallumph back hive to the caverns and Bronya, so she can fuss and fiddle, and cry out over the state of you. When she asks you what you've been doing, just how you got so _dirty_ , Karako, what have you _been doing out there_ \- you've just got one thing to say to her.

"Honk!"


End file.
